Mittwoch, 11. Dezember 2013

The Humboldt Viadrina School of Governance in Berlin is doing some serious work on fighting corruption. The most recent output is a Handbook for Practitioners entitled: Motivating Business to Counter Corruption. In it, I have shared some thoughts on what those fighting corruption may learn from Greenpeace campaigning. May it be helpful to all who try to hold those in power to account.

Corruption is one reason why the public good is being damaged and our
future as humanity is at stake. Greenpeace’s vision of a sustainable society
demands that power be exercised fairly and that those in power be held
accountable for their actions. Corruption undermines this vision, by
privileging those with power and money over others, allowing them to profit
at the expense not only of the rest of us – but of the planet itself.
Greenpeace is therefore honored to share some insights from our campaigning
history with anti-corruption practitioners. We hope that doing so will help
our collective work for a more accountable and just world.

There is no question that sheer
luck often makes the difference between a good - but unsuccessful –
campaign plan and a winning one. The
victories Greenpeace has achieved also vary a lot (you can get an overview
here.

There is no ‘off the shelf’ plan one can adopt, but here are five
lessons from our experience that I would like to emphasize:

1.
A picture is worth more than a 1000 words

It´s a cliché, but it´s true: unless there is a picture, getting
attention is very hard. Abu Ghraib, for example, only became a real scandal
once pictures were available. A
picture isn´t everything, but without good visual material achieving impact
is difficult. What pictures travel can often depend on the news day, but
images that explain the demand of the campaign simply are an essential tool.
Pictures of pipes blowing out dirt or of heavy air pollution simply work
better than only analyses showing
that there is a problem. The combination of “killer facts” with visuals
illustrating them is to be strived for.

2.
You need to identify the point „where it hurts”

With the rise of the Internet there has been a lot of debate about the
tools of campaigning, sometimes at the expense of considering the bread and
butter issues of strategy. But a campaign which is not based on an accurate
analysis of the strength and weaknesses of the company or government it aims
to influence, will never be successful. Planning a campaign to Green Apple or
a campaign to stop the commercialization of genetically engineered rice in China could not be more different in many ways. But they are the same in the sense,
that you need to analyze your ´target` as accurately and effectively as you
can. We sometimes spend years doing research before we find a „lever“ that we
think can deliver real change. If you have not identified such a lever, it´s
probably better not to start your campaign, as you will only look weak. What effective
levers are depends on what you are trying to shift. In the case of Apple, for
example, we realized that we needed to appeal to the Apple fan base to affect
change at Apple. When we were running a campaign on toxic ship paints, on the
other hand, our target audience was often a very small number of technical
magazines covering ship matters. It was (negative) coverage in those
magazines that toxic paint producers were worried about because they directly
influenced market decisions.

3.
Always provide a solution

Some people believe Greenpeace to be against everything, but nothing
could be further from the truth. We always do provide an alternative. We show
in our Energy Revolution scenario,
for example, that you can provide energy for all, cut emissions and do
without coal and nuclear; we don´t JUST oppose coal and nuclear power plants.
That´s why often our confrontations end in cooperation over time. A campaign
on climate-killing refrigerants being used at the Sydney Olympics, for
example, over time morphs into a common agenda with the likes of Coca-Cola to
eliminate climate-damaging f-gases from refrigerants altogether. A
(successful) campaign asking Nestlé to cut its ties with Golden Agri
Resources because of their destructive palm oil practices results in us –
three years later – welcoming GAR´s commitment to „no deforestation footprint“ for palm oil.

4.
Integrity makes you strong

Greenpeace is fiercely independent and takes no money from corporations
or governments. When I talk of „cooperation“ with business in the previous paragraph,
this working together never entails Greenpeace getting any money. In our
experience, it is this integrity that makes us strong. If we say something is
good for people or the planet, the question of corruption simply does not
arise. Nobody can even dream of claiming that we only say this in order to
receive corporate donations. Doing without corporate funding - and by doing
so increasing your integrity - is thus certainly an approach we can recommend
to other players. This seems to be particularly pertinent in the anti-corruption
field.

Part of integrity is of course also accuracy. Greenpeace has its own
Science Unit and issue experts across the organization, because we know we
are only as strong as our claims are accurate.

5.
Being unpredictable makes you stronger: No permanent enemies, no permanent
friends

Strategy is key; it is probably the most important of all criteria for
success (see 2). However, many wrongly equate strategy with a need to define
`one definitive way of doing something`. But not only does one size not fit
all, predictability is simply not an asset in campaigning. If you do the same
thing again and again, that predictability will become your weakness (even if
your execution of the campaign is excellent). The ´other´ side will be
prepared for your next move, or failing that, will be able – soon after you
start your campaign – to decipher an effective counter strategy based on
previous experiences. How to counter “standard” campaigns is already being
taught in MBA classes after all.

It is therefore essential that you stay unpredictable in your choice of
both targets and tools. The reason why Greenpeace is often effective is that
we do both: We take bold action forcing destructive companies to
change course and do first hand research on the ground uncovering scandals and proposing solutions. But we are also present where
important decisions are being taken by powerful institutions and governments, often unnoticed and far from media attention – but with
profound impacts. We have „No permanent friends and no permanent enemies“. We
praise those against whom we have previously campaigned if they do the right
thing. But we also always reserve
the right to confront a corporation on an issue even if we work in
cooperation with it on another.

Greenpeace
does from time to time directly attack corruption and corrupt practices. In
doing so, we learn a lot from the anti-corruption community. I hope that
these lines may help the anti-corruption community in a small way to develop
effective campaign strategies to further our common cause of holding those in
power accountable.

It wasn´t to be. Indeed, even to a long
term observe like myself, it was simply devastating to see how quickly business
as usual, jockeying for positions, dragging of feet and time wasting were the
order of the day again after the extraordinary first day of COP19. Neither the
rich countries nor BASIC countries were
willing to move forward in offering concrete measures to reduce their
emissions, or even agree on a concrete date for doing so. Even though there is
much to gain from climate action in terms of new jobs and avoided costs, the
talks were once again conducted as if climate action was all about pain.

There was much talk about “equity”
and “justice” in the statements. But the rich world shirked the responsibility
for their historical emissions. And other countries, like Brazil, only seemed
to want to talk about history in order to avoid taking action on current and
future emissions. Policies that protect the poor and vulnerable, though, will
need action by all who can act.

Rich countries pledged only
peanuts to the Adaptation Fund and to support countries in their efforts to
tackle climate change and to build up climate friendly economies and failed to
provide the much needed long term certainty of support. Japan and Australia
added insult to injury by tearing up their previous climate commitments right
in the middle of a COP. Brazil, meanwhile, had the audacity to praise it´s new
forest law (the “Forest Code”) at a COP19 event, just as a 28% jump in
deforestation rates in the Amazon over the last year got confirmed. And while China is making big strides domestically in tackling pollution from its
coal industry and advancing renewable energy, it is completely failing to
translate this into a willingness to lead on the global negotiations
stage.

Governments, in short, seemed to only want to illustrate that they are
serving the fossil fuel industries, not their people. No wonder, that all of
civil society was disgusted at the lack of progress and urgency. A large
section of civil society said “enough is enough” and staged a first ever walk
out from a COP. While we walked, we did not move away from global effort to
protect the climate or the UNFCCC. We were walking away from a poisoned COP
where the bags sponsored by an oil company were the symbol of all that is rotten
in the state of climate politics. The message of the walk out was simple: governments at the UNFCCC need to protect the climate and the people, not
the coal and the oil industry.

Indeed, all major NGOs after COP19
seemed to have only one message: “Nothing will change, unless we mobilize for
more change” (see Oxfam or WWF´s release for two examples). That unity is
heartening. Because it is indeed the case, that a global treaty in Paris in
2015 won't be possible without a paradigm shift away from fossil fuels and
nuclear power and towards renewable energy everywhere - and especially in the
EU, the US, China, India and South Africa.

COP19 did provide some positive lessons
too. In Poland, at least, we managed to mobilize for the change we need due to
the meeting taking place there. Never before has the Polish government been so publicly
exposed for not being in line with their own people. 89% percent of Polish citizens want more energy coming from renewable
sources – but nobody used to know that. Following the many
protests, not least against the insensitive

“Coal Summit” staged by the Polish government,everyone in Poland knows now –
even the government. Poland, due to COP19, has a much more open and real energy
debate. Will it be enough to turn the tide and stop the Polish government from
preventing higher climate ambition in the EU only to serve their own coal
interests? Only, if civil society can continue the pressure. Only, if
international civil society keeps watching.

Greenpeace, looking,
forward, will be pushing all national governments throughout 2014 so that they
come to the Ban Ki-Moon summit in September with meaningful emission reduction
offers and are prepared to fill the Green Climate Fund. In particular,
Greenpeace is expecting concrete and ambitious proposals in 2014 for reducing
climate pollution from China, the US and the European Union.

The message from COP19
is that more and more people are getting less and less patient with corporate
polluters, only 90 of which are responsible for approximately 63 % of cumulative
global emissions of industrial CO2 and methane (calculated as CO2
equivalents) between 1854 and 2010.
A growing number of people are also prepared to take direct action against the
coal, oil, gas and nuclear industries and demand a different kind of energy
system. The solidarity shown to the “Arctic 30”
at COP 19 - from civil society and many government delegates - was truly moving. That these activists and journalists -
facing long prison sentences for trying to prevent Gazprom from drilling for
Arctic oil that must stay in the ground if we are to avoid the worst of climate
change – are heros to so many who attended COP 19 shows that more and more
people agree that climate change is now so
serious that civil disobedience is the only appropriate response. As Tomasz,
the Polish Arctic 30 activist, reminded us in a quote used by the Climate Action Network
in their opening statement to COP 19:
“Nowadays, environmental protection demands more
courageous actions … In order to protect what is valuable for us, we have to
undertake further actions.” That is the lesson from COP19. We must all work
together to break the stranglehold of the fossil fuel lobbies on our
governments in time for meaningful deal to be agreed in Paris in 2015.

Donnerstag, 28. November 2013

For the last 53 days, every time one of my daughters climbed onto my lap I could not help but think about the children of the Arctic 30. About how they must be missing their parents and how my colleagues must be missing them. About the fear some feel that their small children may not remember who they are, should they really be sentenced to several years in jail. It's a cruel irony, indeed, that the Arctic 30 are not able to see their children - only because they had the guts to stand up for their future. To protest Gazprom's Prirazlomnaya oil platform because it stands for the madness of seeing the melting Arctic ice as an opportunity to drill for yet more oil.

Every time my daughters jumped onto my lap I felt a little shiver, a little pain. And at the same time a renewed determination to help #FreeTheArctic30 and to intensify our opposition to fossil fuels. Because it is fossil fuels that will, if unchecked, turn our children's future unpleasant, dangerous and chaotic. So, I find myself in Warsaw, Poland, following the absurd, frustrating (but not irrelevant)global climate negotiations. Thinking of the Arctic 30, it´s a privilege to be able to choose to forgo kuddles and laughs with my family in order to try to end the stranglehold the fossil fuel industries have on global politics.

As we were projecting "Storms start here!" we, of course, were thinking of the Philippines being ravaged by what may be the strongest typhoon ever and hoping for our colleagues there to be safe. While we can't yet say how much climate change influenced this monster typhoon, we do know that extreme weather events are becoming more extreme and frequent because of climate change. I am sure everybody following the climate negotiations today was reminded of the Philippines´ emotional intervention at last years climate summit. Then, too, a typhoon ravaged the Philippines. Please take a moment to listen here.

Instead of going for the energy revolution needed, the Polish government has given the fossil fuel industry unprecedented access to this climate summit. The wolves are running the hen house here in Warsaw and coal, the most climate damaging of all energy forms, is portrayed as part of the solution to climate change. Seriously. Poland is, for example, co-hosting a "Coal and Climate Summit" - an oxymoron if there ever was one.

So we have the work cut out for us for the next two weeks; especially when many other governments are also in cahoots with the fossil fuel industry. I would be able to tell my children that governments made progress if Warsaw agreed to commit to additional climate action and finance renewable energy in the developing world before 2020. If governments decided not to drag their feet, but say by next year by how much they will be willing to cut emissions after 2020; and spend 2015 looking at whether the numbers on the table are actually good enough to prevent dangerous climate change and are fair.

Governments plan to sign a climate agreement in Paris in 2015. That deal will only be worth spending any days of my life -- away from my daughters -- if it puts the world on the road to end fossil fuel use by 2050. Which brings me back to the Arctic 30. They risked their freedom, because they knew we need to keep the vast majority of the fossil fuels in the ground, if our children are not to live in climate hell. For us, here in Warsaw, thinking of their children (and ours´) will spur us to push as hard as we can for this climate summit to be a step forward. To keeping it from being the coal-fueled farce the Polish government seems to have in mind.

It's not often that the President of Brazil, the Vice President of Iran, the Chancellor of Germany, the Argentinian Senate, the EU parliament, Burma's opposition leader, 13 Nobel Peace Prize winners, and hundreds of parliamentarians all over the world agree on anything.

But that they all agree with Greenpeace? That's truly humbling, and — as far as I know — unprecedented. I have been doing work with politicians all over the world for many years. But I have never seen such a truly global outpouring of support. For which we say: Thank you.

Let me take you on a small world tour, which illustrates the depth and breadth of the support we have received. Especially when you remember, that this is just a small selection, a snapshot.

Dr. Massoumeh Ebtekar, Iran's Vice President and Head of their Department of the Environment, has described the peaceful actions taken by the Arctic 30 as "an act of compassion" as it was aimed at keeping Arctic oil in the ground. Burma's opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi has applauded the peacefulness of our activists, while Indian politician Maneka Gandhi has been calling on governments to support those defending the earth, not her destroyers.

In Mexico, Senators such as Angélica de la Peña, Alejandro Encina or Gerardo Flores have supported us as well as Deputies Gloria Bautista, Aleida Alavez or Ricardo Mejía, who wrote letters of support, and the President of the PRD (the Party of the Democratic Revolution), Jesús Zambrano Grijalba. And while we wish that the Canadian government would act more decisively to free their citizens, Paul and Alexandre, in Canada, too, we have had outspoken support, for example, from MP Elizabeth May.

In Europe, meanwhile, we are grateful for the explicit support by Germany's Chancellor Merkel, UK Prime Minister Cameron as well as France's Prime Minster Ayrault and hundreds of Members of Parliaments — over 100 each in Italy, the UK or Spain for example. The list of Members of the European Parliament who are raising their voice also continues to grow (have a look here). The recent debate at the European Parliament is well worth listening to. In it, EU Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik reminded the world that "Greenpeace had a message for all of us": we need to act urgently on climate change, if we want to protect the Arctic.

I could go on for a lot longer listing support — from the Mayor of Naples to some 50 MPs in Turkey and over 60 in Sweden or the beautiful support from Desmond Tutu. In some ways I should, as everyone who has supported us deserves a loud shout out, including the more than two million of you who have sent a letter to a Russian embassy (if you have not, please do so now).

If every politician who is supporting the efforts to free the Arctic 30 acted decisively on climate change, we would have a good chance of protecting the Arctic from the destruction my colleagues were peacefully protesting against. Only when we have as broad a coalition of support to implement the energy revolution we need, deliver zero deforestation, protect the High Seas, or produce food ecologically, will the world be the better place that the Arctic 30 were calling for.

I suspect that I — indeed we all— still have numerous heated discussions with many politicians ahead of us, before we reach that goal. There will be a time for that. For now, though, I am just grateful that the Arctic 30 do have so many good friends in high places. And your support!

Obrigado. Gracias. Merci. Danke. Thank you. Please do not waver in your determination and support until the Arctic 30 are back where they belong: with their families.

Freitag, 18. Oktober 2013

The public image of Greenpeace is one of "corporate bashers". But the full story is much more complicated.
Greenpeace indeed challenges power and the status quo because business as usual will deliver nothing but run away climate change, more poverty and a poisoned planet. Challenging the powers that be is therefore essential to achieve real benefits for people and the planet. In a world in which already 44 of the 100 largest economic entities are multinational corporations, the powers that need to be challenge are and will – increasingly often – be corporations.
My personal aspiration has always been a world in which governments ensure the rights of all to a decent environment by effectively regulating corporate behavior. I want governments to outlaw destructive practices, from dangerous chemicals to nuclear power. As a step in the right direction, governments should make corporations fully liable for their social and environmental impacts, including the impacts of their supply chains.
But while I am proud to occasionally help disrupt destructive business, I am also proud to work for an organization that actively supports the solutions the world needs. Greenpeace never says no without offering an alternative. That´s why Greenpeace has teamed up with the renewables industry, for example, to show that we can deliver clean energy for all and cut climate damaging gases – our energy revolution scenario. That´s why we support communities from Papua New Guinea to Canada managing their forests sustainably, not for short term profits.
We are so committed to getting solutions the world needs adopted fast, that we are, at times, even willing to praise corporations that - as a whole - are still part of the problem. We say “well done” to Coca Cola for eliminating climate damaging refrigerants from their cooling equipment, because the benefits for our climate and future generations are significant and real. Though what we aim for remains clean production, globally, enshrined by law.
I was happy to shed some light on the complexity of the relationship between corporations and Greenpeace at the FSC In Good Company conference in Copenhagen last week. You can watch the full session here:

Dienstag, 15. Oktober 2013

Montag, 12. August 2013

The things Greenpeacer´s do on holiday. Earlier this year my team member Sofia took a break from her main job - protecting the oceans - and helped produce this powerful The Ecologist film on how the economic crisis is being (ab)used to force a destructive mining project onto a Greek community.

Donnerstag, 8. August 2013

There is nothing I am more angry about than the fact that all too often those exploiting people or destroying the future of my daughters are not being held to account.

So when I recently spoke at the Global Reporting Initiative´s global conference on "Sustainability Reporting Regulation: Today and Tomorrow" I called for a lot more than corporate reporting. It´s progressive regulation we need. While at the conference, I was appalled to see companies like Shell or Enel pretending to be good corporate citizens because they report under the GRI guidelines. Them claiming any form of sustainability is risible as long as they drill in the Arctic (Shell) or burn coal (Enel).

Sonntag, 7. Juli 2013

I grew up hating nothing more than
nationalism. But I am hoping Scotland will vote Yes to independence in 2014. I have come to believe that Scottish independence can be a welcome step to a more people-centred Europe. Here is why - with many thanks to Mike Small and all at bellacaledonia for being interested in my thoughts and therefore making me write this down:

Among the progressive German
community that I grew up in, nationalism was the slippery slope to fascism. I
was proud to call myself a global citizen or European. Only when I left Germany
to study at the internationalist United World College in Canada, did it dawn on me, that there could be nothing more
German than my resistance to being German. The way I thought of “global
citizenship” and the nation state – all of it was a perfectly rational response
to Germany´s genocidal history. But that did not make it any less German.

Listening to new friends from
Asia, Africa and Latin America I soon learned of the liberating role their nationalisms
had played in the fight for decolonization (and often plays in the fight against neoliberalism to this day). I learned to differentiate and to listen.

When I moved to Scotland in
the early 1990s, I encountered communities reeling from Thatcherite
destruction, caught between the depressed apathy Fish describes in Internal
Exile and a movement to rejuvenate
communities. I learned that the people fighting to regain control over their
destiny were often driven by a notion of community and belonging – by a deep
emotional connection to land. This was alien to me- Hitler had, after all, made talk of a
connection to the “soil” synonymous in my mind with murderous destruction. But
I couldn´t be but inspired by the battles to take back the land, from the Eigg Island Trust to the fight against the Harris superquarry. The attempts to rejuvenate a national progressive discourse
as the battle for the Scottish parliament intensified also impressed me – not
least through the excellent theatre and writing they produced. That wonderful
writers from Alasdair Gray to the late Ian M. Banks endorsed independence for
reasons I could understand and support – from never wanting to fight illegal
wars again to strengthening culture to local control over resources – certainly
helped. Meanwhile, the rules being imposed from the Conservatives in London
were so obviously not in line with the views of the majority in my adopted home,
it felt indeed like an being governed by aliens. That feeling of being
disenfranchised as two thirds of Scots said no to neoliberalism at every
election and yet remained unheard is one that I will never forget.

And, crucially, it did not
end in 1997 as New Labour – at the very least in terms of economic policies - proved
yet another alien force.

There were striking parallels
to the tales I had heard from my friends from the “South” and those I heard in
Scotland´s communities. Any look at who
owns Scotland, and for whose benefit
the economy was (is?) being run, made me think more of Brazil or South Africa
more so than other European countries. And I wasn´t alone in drawing the paralels.
George Monbiot founded “This is Our Land” because he
saw parallels between the landless struggles he had encountered in his travels
and the culture of enclosure in Britain. And the fellow activist I met
protesting against the M77 or the proposed new A 701 described the imposition
of neoliberalism from London on the social democratic majority in Scotland just
like my African friends described how their economies had been distorted to
serve the colonialists first. The struggle for environmental justice and
community control didn´t seem much different from the Gorbals to the South
African townships I was studying for my MA thesis.

Slowly I realized that
Scottish self-rule has the potential to be a building block for the “Europe of
the regions” that my anti-nationalist German self had been advocating all along
(initially to overcome the German nation state). The fact that Scotland is so
self-consciously pro-European made this realization easier. Indeed, to me, it´s
much easier to imagine Scotland alone thriving in the EU, than for a truly
trusting relationship between the “United Kingdom” and the Continent ever to
develop.

In the end, though, my
reasons for saying YES are not about the past or my personal tale of learning
to understand certain forms of nationalism as liberating. I say Ja to an
independent Scotland because of the future and the promises it holds. A Yes
vote, it seems to me, is simply the best way to ensure that more communities
can take control of more of their own destiny.As Patrick Harvie has argued: A yes vote is needed for Scotland to have
a chance to “take responsibility for the challenges of the 21st
century” – and to chart a different
course than the suicidal, City dependent and fossil-fueled trajectory that the
London-dominated UK is on.

A yes vote does not guarantee
anything. The struggle to bring back power to the lowest possible level and to
deliver the fairer society that polls show Scots want will continue long after
a Yes vote has been secured. But the nationalism that is one part behind the
Yes vote is not the nationalism I was – quite rightly – taught to hate. David
Greig says it best, I think:

It´s a list I like. And of this „to
do“ list more items will be „ticked“, I believe, if Scotland has the courage to
say „Yes“. The rest of Europe may be baffled for a moment if Scotland indeed
goes it alone. But then, I hope, we fellow European will lbe inspired and work
where we are to take back our destiny in whatever we can as well.

Introducing myself, Daniel Mittler

I am the Political Director of Greenpeace International, heading their Political and Business Unit. I am leading a global team of specialists working on issues ranging from protecting the High Seas to disrupting dirty business models and toxic trade deals. We are responsible for internal strategy advice to campaigns and external representation at global political and business fora. I am a member of the Global Program management team and from September 2014 to June 2015 also managed the Actions and Science Units (two of my favourite parts of Greenpeace). I have also served on the senior management team of Greenpeace’s global forest campaign and on the European Executive Committee.

From 1997-2000 I was a researcher at the Bartlett School of Planning at University College London. I was looking at achieving sustainabilty in cities; mainly because I love cities. The year before, I was living in Bonn serving my country by writing press releases for the youth-wing of Friends of the Earth Germany (BUNDjugend).

Berlin, where I have lived - with a couple of breaks (in Oxford and Amsterdam) - since 2000, is now the (other) place I call home. To be precise: Kreuzberg.

I love kayaking, reading, going to the theatre and cinema, hiking, music (I still try to play the cello) - all the usual middle class stuff. I have a way too loud laugh, but at least I manage to laugh. What really excites me is making the world at the same time a more just and greener place - and creating spaces where people can get active. So, do something!